Melissa Ferrin

I teach English (as a second language) to engineering students in southern Mexico.

If you live in a place where they can grow--prickly pear or nopales. This year we planted cuttings, and in 3 weeks we were eating young pads. Two weeks after that, we cut more. Now three months in, we can cut young pads weekly, and I suspect we will be able to for many years to come. Last week we had a special treat and ate our first 3 prickly pear fruit (tunas). One red, one orange, and one yellow. Not all types give fruit or good fruit

I'm really suprised by some of the responses!
In the 80s in the midwest a lot of people would make the fruit versions, I can't imagine one laden with nutella and candy!

My mom always used her pie crust recipe, A cream cheese spread made by thinning and whipping cream cheese. Then topped with whatever fresh fruit was in season.  If it was made the day before she'd also do a thin plain gelatine layer on top to keep it from browning.

I'm on the salt-is-a-mineral-so-clearly-not-a-spice team.
I absolutely love black peper--ground over the dish. So that's my vote, but haven't seen anyone mention my second favorite--oregano. That wins for versatility.

It sounds pretty sound to me. If you are starting mesquite from seed make sure to treat the seeds by scarring and or a vinegar soak. Mesquite normally germinates AFTER it has gone through the digestive system of a cow or a goat. As in cows and goats eat the pods then poop out the seeds which sprout up in the cow pie--goat dropping.

I'd like to second Liv and say that all over Mexico, people eat field corn fresh.
Having grown up in Iowa--granddaughter of a farmer, I was VERY skeptical at first.  But it is actually much tastier--not "sweet" but has a much fuller flavor. Now when I return to the midwest of the USA and eat sweet corn I find it just that--sweet, and lacking other flavor.
Of course, we are making tortillas, pozole, and tamales so the vast majority of the corn is left to fully mature, but stalks with two or three ears, have one or two removed to eat as fresh corn to allow the other ear to get all the nutrients from the plant.

Zach Weiss also posted a really digestible video this morning, light on details, but great for sharing with the general population.

Sharon Tompkins wrote:Hi! Any updates on this? I’m
A professor with 2 kids teaching remotely and looking for an offf grid community with excellent internet so I can stay employed

Rather than internet--your biggest concern would be stable electricity. We often lose power. Like, every time it rains. Outages last from a few seconds to a few days.

I'm also interested in learning to make the most of Google Earth.
When my school started using Google Classroom in the fall of 2020, Google had some very good free training (set up so that access to everything was free, but if you wanted a certificate of completion of the training, that's when you had to pay; if you didn't care about papers to prove your knowledge, you never had to pay). I've been snooping around Google Earth trying to see if they have something similar, but with no luck.
How did you learn? By just playing around with it? I feel like I'm getting too old to learn new things that way and I'd like a bit of guidance.
Any youtube tutorials to recommend?
We are laying out water retention features and an irrigation system for our steeply sloping 29-hectare reforestation plot in southern Mexico, where rains come between June and October and hardly ever outside of that.

The area of Mexico where I live the traditional way of eating in the countryside is two meals a day. Get up and start work--maybe have a hot drink but not necessarily. Work until 10-11 stop for a big breakfast. Then work until about 4-5 and have the main meal of the day at that time. Maybe have another hot drink before bed but not necessarily.

This fits perfectly into the new trends of intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating.

I grew up in the US in the 70s-80s when Kellogg's convinced us that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.